Editorial | Facts v. fiction on health care reform

Even before the first crack of the gavel calling the 2013 General Assembly into session, haters of the Affordable Care Act had gathered in Frankfort Tuesday to protest what they call "Obamacare."

"This is the beginning of a very long battle!" declared David Adams, a tea-party activist who led the rally where participants offered some surprising and not entirely factual information about the 2010 federal law meant to expand access to health insurance.

Actually, some of the information was completely false and totally absurd - such as the insistence of one speaker that 16,500 armed IRS agents will enforce health care reform or that the federal law cannot be repealed.

The latter claim will come as a shock to Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, who have tried to repeal it 33 times, and especially to Michele Bachmann, the Republican congresswoman and tea-party enthusiast from Minnesota who boasts she filed the first bill of 2013 to "repeal Obamacare in its entirety."

It also should jolt Mitt Romney, the Republican who based his unsuccessful presidential campaign on a pledge "to repeal Obamacare."

Anyway, the battle pretty much ended when the U.S Supreme Court last year upheld the Affordable Care Act and President Obama, who pushed the bill through Congress, was elected to a second term.

So it's disheartening to see state Sen. Julie Denton, a Louisville Republican and chairwoman of the Senate Health and Welfare Committee, jumping on the tea party-driven bandwagon by pledging to file legislation meant to obstruct health care reform in Kentucky.

The measure would block Gov. Steve Beshear's work to create a health care exchange, a key provision of the law to create a one-stop online shopping site where individuals and small businesses can purchase health insurance plans. It also would bar Kentucky from expanding its Medicaid program to cover more people who are very poor and lack health coverage.

This is a surprising move for Ms. Denton, who has worked to advance legislation on behalf of the poor and disabled and has not indulged in demagoguery that afflicts some in the General Assembly.

As the head of the Senate's top committee on the health of Kentucky citizens, she is well aware that about 650,000 people in this state have no health insurance. That's in a state of a little over 4 million residents.

She also is well aware of the pressing health care needs of citizens in a state with some of the nation's highest rates of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, obesity and dental decay.

And she also is aware of the high cost of the uninsured to the rest of us through higher insurance premiums and taxes that help subsidize care for the poor when they show up in emergency rooms.

Kentucky is one of more than 25 states that have created or plan to create a health care exchange. Under the Affordable Care Act, the federal government will run one for states that don't.

Thanks to Mr. Beshear's decision to create Kentucky's exchange through an executive order, Kentucky is well under way in its work to create the system where people can go to a single website, compare plans, determine if they are eligible for any financial assistance and purchase health care coverage.

Kentucky also has been approved for about $60 million in federal funds to create and operate the health exchange that should be running by 2014, when most of the remaining provisions of health care reform take effect.

At this point, it probably would be better to work toward a system that benefits the most Kentuckians rather than try to obstruct health care reform.

But Ms. Denton's bills may not have much success in the House, controlled by Democrats.

Her counterpart, Rep. Tom Burch, a Louisville Democrat and chairman of the House Health and Welfare Committee, said Ms. Denton should "save the ink" used to print her legislation and said he's not interested in passing it.

"I know what they're trying to do, they're just trying to beat Obamacare," Mr. Burch said of the Senate Republicans. "But we have an obligation to take care of our people."

That's a worthy concept. And for those who truly oppose the law, it would be better to deal in facts, not fiction.

Louisville, Kentucky • Southern Indiana

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Editorial | Facts v. fiction on health care reform

Even before the first crack of the gavel calling the 2013 General Assembly into session, haters of the Affordable Care Act had gathered in Frankfort Tuesday to protest what they call 'Obamacare.'